“I had a 4.0 GPA all four years in high school,” Courtney says. “I focused a lot on school. It got kind of difficult, balancing racing and schooling and trying to keep grades up as best I could. Fortunately, I was able to achieve that.”Now, she says, she will “pretty much” put her focus on racing. She adds that focus is now aimed squarely at road racing, and next year (if everything falls into place) she’ll be gunning for the U.S. F4 Championship, or perhaps the Cooper Tires USF2000 series. Her long-term goal, of course, is IndyCar.

An accomplished speedway
motorcycle, midget, and sprint-
car racer as well as, now, road
racer, Courtney says it all began
when she was “about two years
old,” with a Honda 50 acquired
by her dad, Jack Crone.

In short order, Courtney recalls, she was riding the Honda in their driveway, sans training wheels. “I couldn’t even touch the pegs, but I was having a lot of fun.”The Honda led to a go-kart and excursions to a nearby elementary school parking lot for what might be called a beginner’s introduction to Solo. Dad would set up cones, “And I would drive around them,” Courtney explains. “When I was about 5, for Christmas, he bought me a quarter midget. That’s when I’d say we really got into racing.”After more than a few quarter-midget titles, Courtney added speedway bikes at about age 10, because, she explains, she had to wait until age 12 to begin racing a USAC Ford Focus midget, where, of course, in about another two years, her success led to wingless sprint cars.

It’s about this time, too, principally in conjunction with her midget racing, that her dad sat her down and asked, “Are you really serious about this, Courtney? Do you really want to do it?” Her answer: “Yes – I want to make a career of it.”“I think it’s really cool when someone asks me, ‘Well, what did you do?’ ‘Oh, I raced speedway motorcycles and dirt midgets and sprint cars on pavement.’ I think that’s something that makes my history different from most youngsters coming on the scene,” Courtney says. “I definitely take a lot of pride in my dirt background.”The transition to road racing and the SCCA occurred in 2016, where she won Cal Club’s Formula Mazda series, which in turn, opened doors and led to the VMB driver scholarship, her 2018 FormulaSPEED title, and her invitations to compete for Team USA, Mazda Road to Indy, and W Series scholarships.

“It’s taught me to grow up really
quickly,” Courtney says about the
extraordinary opportunities to test
herself against other talented young
drivers in the scholarship shootouts.
“It’s taught me to be really serious
about racing, to be fully ready for
anything that’s thrown my way, to be
my best and not have any distractions
in my way, and to be fully focused on
what I have to do and what I want to
achieve once I get there,” she says.

Even though this time she wasn’t
selected as a scholarship winner,
the experience has been invaluable,
Courtney says, not only for the
lessons learned, but also for the
people she’s met and the off-track
insight she’s gained. “I made a lot of
great contacts, and the stuff I learned
actually helped me get into the
team I’m part of today,” she says.

As for the remainder of her current
Formula F season [which as of press
time included weekends at Sonoma
and Laguna Seca], Courtney notes
there’s a 50/50 chance she will be at the

2019 SCCA National Championships
Runoffs – if her family can make the
budget work, if she and her team have
developed the car sufficiently, and if
she has grown in comfort in the car.

“We’re getting better every time
we hit the track,” she says. As of late
June, she reports, “I’ve gotten two
wins out of three weekends. Most
important, I’m happy with how much
I’ve learned about driving Formula
F cars. It’s been really good to have
competitors like Chuck Horn and
Denny Renfrow. We’ve had close races,
and I’ve learned a lot from them. So,
I’m very pleased with our progress.”

Plus, she adds, “We’re having a
ton of fun while we’re doing it.”

“It’s taught me to be really serious aboutracing, to be fully ready for anything”